10 Questions With Financial Planner Frank Armstrong

With the election blues boosting pundits' bank accounts and puncturing everyone's portfolios, now might be a good time to tune out the Beltway din and get back to the basics of how you should build your portfolio.

This week, we put 10 Questions to veteran financial adviser Frank Armstrong, president of Miami-based Managed Account Services and chief investment strategist for DirectAdvice.com. Armstrong is a die-hard index-fund proponent who's been helping people build portfolios for the past 27 years. Here he gets down to brass tacks, laying out how much money he thinks long- and short-term investors should have in U.S. and foreign stocks, and how much you should keep in cash at all times.

If you like what he's got to say and are hunting for additional pragmatic advice, check out his book Investment Strategies for the 21st Century, which you can read for free on Armstrong's Web site. ...